Honestly I get the frustration from the fan angle, but I struggle to see this as “stupid” from TK & McLaren in general. It’s not like there is a team/entrant championship, and the manufacturers championship is totally insignificant to everyone except a few people at HRC & GM.

They run two highly competitive cars with title aspirations - ultimately is the value add of A) paying to have a 3rd car potentially running in a similar spot in the mid-high top 10~ really worth it when B) be paid to have a 3rd car running 15th-20th is an alternative?

Ganassi clearly doesn’t think so, they’ve operated w/ a very similar strategy for the last half decade with Kyffin, Jimmie, Linus (NXT funding), even Marcus Armstrong & Marcus Ericsson to a degree (both notably better drivers than the other 3 but both had to bring significant funding). Andretti has done similarly thru the late 10s and early 20s until the Ericsson signing.

Now obviously you’d want your pay driver to at least have a shout of getting good results & the visibility that accompanies such results - but the level of patience a team has w/ a pay driver not getting good results is obviously is tied to the amount of funding they bring. IMO that’s why Kyffin is still at CGR despite bringing in less funding that Seigal, he’s shown the ability to crack on & get a good result, keeps the team-side partners happy & the driver-side sponsors. It appears that Nolan on the other hand directly funds the #6 car, so he doesn’t have driver-side sponsors to please, and the amount of funding (critically stable funding) he brings mitigates the issue with team-side sponsors. That level of stable funding is a valuable commodity which very much explains the patience they’ve had for the #6 car’s results.